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Elizabeth’s family first grew suspicious when they noticed a van picking up the 16-year-old from their London home.

But her parents had no idea that the vehicle was taking her to a south-end hotel, where a group of underage girls were being plied with drugs and alcohol to work in the sex trade.

Elizabeth, whose real name can’t be published under a court-imposed publication ban, still struggles to talk about what happened during the two-week period at the hotel that ended when police arrested a man and charged him with running a teenage prostitution ring.

Now 19, Elizabeth said the girls — all friends from high school — were told to use crystal meth and threatened with violence if they didn’t comply.

Police charged a man with more than a dozen offences in the case, including trafficking persons younger than 18, living off the avails of prostitution and exercising control and administering drugs for the purpose of illicit sex.

But the Crown later withdrew most the charges, noting that some complainants from the case couldn’t be located, after the man pleaded guilty to weapon and drug offences.

Elizabeth, who testified at the trial, said she still lives in fear of her trafficker. “I’m terrified to walk the streets now that he’s out,” she said.

Elizabeth’s story shines a light on human trafficking in London — a city identified as a hub for the crime — and highlights the challenges people who have been trafficked face navigating the justice system and finding support services.

Defined as the exploitation for profit of a person through force, fraud or coercion, human trafficking falls into two categories: labour trafficking and sex trafficking.

The crime is gradually getting more attention — and funding — from governments across Canada. As law-enforcement officials and anti-trafficking agencies across the country step up their fight against trafficking, they’re increasingly looking south of the border for guidance.

America’s human trafficking strategy is better co-ordinated and funded, say advocates, who estimate Canada is a decade behind the U.S. in its war on the crime.

One staffer at a Toronto-based anti-trafficking agency who recently toured the U.S. said Canada is catching up fast, but there’s still plenty to learn from the Americans.

“From what I’ve seen, I think we’re closing the gap,” said Ashley Franssen-Tingley, program co-ordinator at the Canadian Centre to End Human Trafficking, who was part of a seven-person delegation brought to the U.S. in the fall.

Franssen-Tingley met with officials from the Department of Homeland Security and Immigration Customs Enforcement who have trained 100,000 airline employees on the signs of human trafficking, a strategy she’d like to see replicated in Canada.

Franssen-Tingley also praised the Boston Family Justice Centre, where people who have been trafficked and their families can access emergency and long-term services in one location.

“Having the service providers co-located makes navigating the system easier for clients and allows more collaboration between the service agencies,” she said.

Pick up the phone

The United States is the first country to launch a national human trafficking hotline.

Since the 24-hour service was introduced in 2007, calls have increased every year, according to Polaris, a non-profit that runs the American toll-free hotline. There were 53,936 calls to the hotline in 2016, up from 5,746 in 2008.

In addition to fielding tips about human trafficking, operators connect callers with local support services, and information from the hotline is used to create a database that helps non-profits and law-enforcement agencies better understand and respond to trafficking.

Canadian anti-trafficking organizations have long complained about the lack of concrete data on the crime, but that could soon change.

The Canadian Centre to End Human Trafficking (CCEHT), based in Toronto, is working with Polaris to launch a hotline north of the border in the fall. The project has been in the works for years, but was recently made possible after an anonymous donor made a “serious contribution,” said chief executive Barbara Gosse, who estimates it will cost $2 million a year to operate the hotline, plus $3 million for awareness campaigns.

Harnessing awareness

Human trafficking is an old crime that’s now being looked at differently, said Simone Bell, survivor outreach co-ordinator at Voicefound, an Ottawa-based agency dedicated to combating child sex abuse and commercial sexual exploitation.

Awareness is the most important weapon in the war on trafficking, said Bell, who was trafficked herself.

“It’s the most important piece, because without training, without education, we’re unable to prevent it, and we’re also unable to identify it,” she said.

Nearly half of the people Bell works with have a basic understanding of human trafficking, an improvement from four years earlier when roughly one in 10 did, she said.

Bell credits education and awareness campaigns for frontline workers, police and at schools for increasing the awareness of trafficking.

“Everybody is starting to get involved and everybody is starting to learn what it is, what it looks like and who’s at risk.”

London West NDP MPP Peggy Sattler admits she didn’t know very much about human trafficking prior to 2014, when she joined an all-party committee created to look at sexual violence and harassment in Ontario.

After the politicians listened to nearly 150 speakers, some of whom spoke about human trafficking, the committee decided to draw attention to the crime in its report.

“When we were crafting the final report, we felt it was important to highlight the issue of human trafficking as a stand-alone issue,” Sattler said. “The needs of victims of trafficking are quite unique and distinct from survivors of sexual violence and harassment.”

In the U.S., President Donald Trump’s daughter, Ivanka, has become perhaps the highest profile crusader against human trafficking.

She delivered an anti-human trafficking speech in the fall at the United Nations General Assembly, where she called the crime “the greatest human rights issue of our time.”

The U.S. created the Advisory Council on Human Trafficking, made up of 11 people who were trafficked, in 2015 to make recommendations on federal anti-trafficking policies.

“I can’t imagine anyone going through what I went through, repeatedly,” said council member Tina Frundt, the founder of Courtney’s House, a Washington, D.C.-based non-profit that assists underage people who have been trafficked.

Besides fighting human trafficking at home, the U.S. government takes the battle beyond its boarders with its annual Trafficking in Persons Report, a comprehensive study that examines trafficking in individual countries and critiques how governments respond.

How does Canada stack up globally?

Canada is one of 37 countries to receive a tier 1 designation from the U.S State Department, meaning it fully meets the criteria in America’s Trafficking Victims Protection Act, according to the 2017 Trafficking in Persons report.

“The government demonstrated serious and sustained efforts by operating a national anti-trafficking task force to co-ordinate, monitor, and report on efforts to combat trafficking,” the 454-page report said of Canada.

But the annual report noted that fewer people who had been trafficked were identified — there were 77 in 2016, down from 99 the previous year — and accessing funding for trauma-informed care and specialized services hadn’t improved. Also, no labour traffickers were convicted for a third consecutive year, the report said.

Recommendations for Canada included increasing services and shelters for people who have been trafficked, boosting proactive law-enforcement techniques to probe human trafficking, intensifying efforts to prosecute traffickers, more training for judges and lawyers, and improving trafficking data collection.

The road to recovery

People who have been trafficked like Elizabeth are left to deal with the emotional fallout from their experiences long after they’re rescued.

Though she’s back at home now, surrounded by her family and beloved dogs, Elizabeth is dealing with lasting mental-health issues, her mother said.

“She’s threatened suicide,” the mother said, adding her daughter has worked with a psychotherapist, a therapist and a psychiatrist.

“She’s a beautiful person, but . . . you never know what you’re going to get any day of the week.”

While Elizabeth still faces a long and uncertain road to recovery, other people who have been trafficked face different challenges. Many don’t have supportive families and homes to return to after they’ve been rescued.

In 2016, non-profits reported only 24 shelter beds specifically dedicated to people who had been trafficked nationwide.

“A lot of the times when it comes to quick emergency housing we end up putting people in hotels,” Simone Bell of Voicefound said. “It’s not a long-term solution.”

Though the federal and provincial governments have recently pledged more money to combat trafficking, including Ontario’s vow last year to spread $18.6 million between 44 organizations, anti-trafficking advocates are still sounding the alarm on a lack of funding.

“There’s still not enough,” Bell said.

Elizabeth’s mother, meanwhile, is working to come to terms about what happened to her daughter.

Asked whether she’d ever imagined her daughter could have been trafficked, the mother replied, “Never, never, never. Because I always felt she was fully protected.”

A snapshot of trafficking in Canada

Ninety per cent of people who have been trafficked are trafficked domestically, meaning all the stages of trafficking happen within country’s borders.

Sex trafficking is the most common type in Canada, with Ontario identified as a hub.

Most traffickers use the Internet to recruit people to traffick, most of whom don’t recognize they’re being trafficked.

Prosecuting traffickers

In 2016, police charged 107 people in 68 trafficking cases, compared to 112 individuals in 63 cases the previous year.

Courts convicted 10 sex traffickers and no labour traffickers in 2016, with sentences ranging from six months to 9 1/2 years in prison.

Prosecutions continued against 300 individuals, including 34 suspected labour traffickers, in 2016.

The problem in London

Identified as a human-trafficking hub because of its proximity to Highway 401, where women and girls are forced to work as prostitutes out of nearby hotels

The London police human trafficking unit laid 16 human trafficking charges, along with more than 200 other charges, last year. Fifteen females were rescued and 30 johns charged.

Dale Carruthers was one of 20 ­international journalists ­taking part in the Foreign Press ­Centre’s Combating ­Trafficking in ­Persons trip. The group travelled to Washington, D.C., ­Houston, Texas, and Los Angeles for the two-week program, ­sponsored by the U.S. government.